Homily: Report Card

Year B / Ordinary Time /Thirty-third Sunday

Readings: Daniel 12.1-3 / Psalm 16 (R/1) / Hebrews 10.11-14,18 / Mark: 13.24-32

We’ve come to that time of the year, again; a time we all know so well as one of either delight or disappointment, relief or anxiety. 

We have a name for this time in school: it’s report card time. For us who are students, teachers or parents, a report card sums up how well one has lived and studied this past school year. It also tells the student if she has arrived at the next stage of studies. 

Our readings today invite us to consider how we want to arrive next Sunday to celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King and mark end this liturgical year. 

Like students with their report cards, what can you and I expect to see in our report card of faith for 2015? What will it say about the quality of how we have encountered God and lived our Christian life? 

We began this liturgical year last November with Advent, preparing for God’s coming closer to us through the Incarnation. We prayed his birth, his life, his death, and resurrection in the Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons. We prayed with his teachings, his healings, his comfortings and his callings in the season of ordinary time.  As we end this year, it would be good for us to reflect on how much we have grown as Christians by trusting in God’s love. 

How can we evaluate ourselves for this report card? By reflecting on today’s readings; they are like an end-of-year examination we can take to find our scores for the report card. 

An examination not in that traditional sense of being tested for what we have learnt. But examination in that Ignatian sense of looking over our life to find how God has labored for us, and so to relish God’s goodness joyfully and gratefully. And where we need to, to improve on so that we will be better relationship with God and one another next year.

The first examination question our readings pose us is: “How well have you kept the faith, especially in difficult times?” 

Both Daniel and Jesus speak about distress and tribulation, about the dead rising, about the darkened sun and moon and stars falling from the sky. 

I don’t know about you but they frighten me. They frighten me because they speak about the end of the world and about the inescapable reality that I — and those I love — will die. They frighten me a little more because they remind me that when my life is done I will stand before God who will weigh how selfish or charitable my acts of loving God and neighbor were. And today they frighten me much more because they remind me that so much of human suffering, pain and grief is caused by human evil, the kind of evil that broke our hearts yesterday when so many in Paris were massacred senselessly by terrorists.

In our First Reading Daniel speaks of wars and distress besieging God’s people. But he also prophesizes about God taking care of them, especially those named in the “Book of Life”. Daniel’s prophecy calls God’s people to have faith in God and to live accordingly to God’s plan: that human life will not end in death but in resurrection. Happy are they who know this; they live justly before God and with neighbor. Their lives shine forever like the stars.

Have you and I lived our Christian lives this past year wisely, especially, in our struggles and difficulties? Living with faith in God and in one another? And living in this way, living with enough trust to love God justly and to love others mercifully? 

Today’s readings pose this second examination question: "How observant have you been of God’s fidelity to love us still?"

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus uses dramatic images of the end times to get this point across to his disciples and us: that amidst disaster and destruction, the Son of Man will come with power and glory for all the wise and waiting.

But how can humankind, so often caught up in suffering, anxiety and despair, experience this power, this glory, this hope?  By recognising the Son of Man as God’s gift of Jesus, who is our assurance that “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well in the end”* So, how can we experience hope?

By paying attention and being observant. “Learn a lesson from the fig tree,” Jesus tells his disciples. What is this lesson? That there is always hope whenever there is life. “Observe the fig tree’s branches becoming tender and leaves sprouting”, Jesus adds. These are signs of summer coming and winter left far behind. These are signs of life, not death. These are signs of hope in the small details of life that are so often forgotten in pain, grief and despair. 

And where there is life and hope, there is God. God always present, especially with the suffering and despairing, and laboring for their wellbeing and happiness.

If God is indeed to be found in the small details of life, think of how God visited you, saved you, labored for your good when everything seemed to have crashed and burned, or so you thought. Perhaps with such simplicity as:

— your spouse saying, “It’s ok, honey, I love you still.”

— a colleague holding your hand and whispering, “It’s over; let’s get on with the job.”

— your doctor saying, “your checkup's fine; you’re healthy.”

— and yes, even for those affected by the terrorist attacks in Paris through many who have hashtagged #Porte Ouverte, “Open House, come and be safe”.

Today Jesus’ teaching is this: be observant of the details in your life; God is always there. And finding God is how we will know that what we believe in is indeed true: that this God, who has saved us in Jesus, wants to be nowhere else but with us and for us.

Have you and I paid enough attention to God’s faithful and life-giving presence in our lives this year? Have we then let God love us in our failings and give us life in our hoping? 

Today's examination of our past year asks us to evaluate just two things in our lives:  the quality of our fidelity to God and the depth of our gratitude for God’s fidelity to us. I wonder what grade we will give ourselves for these in our report card to God and to one another.

What about God’s report card to us? 

Today’s readings challenge us to become more attentive to God in the details of our living and our loving. This wisdom will help us to know how to live life confidently and love mercifully like Jesus when life is harsh. Wiser still are those can do this selflessly by caring for others and uplifting them to a fuller, happier life. 

Then, when the world darkens and everything we know seems to fall apart, we will better understand why we should heed Daniel’s call that we live lives faithful to God:  for this is how we can shine brightly like the stars, shinning for others and revealing to them the good news that our God is indeed a God-who-is-with-us always, loving us into fullness of life.

And I believe that God will deeply appreciate our effort to be good Christians and give us an A+. Yes, an A+ for having accomplished a fuller discipleship in Jesus. Now wouldn’t that a wonderful report card from God for us to finish this liturgical year well and happily?

*Julian of Norwich

preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore.

photo: www.spotlightlearning.ca